


Asleep or Dead (Bucky can be an emo dork when he almost dies)

by relenafanel



Series: Slayer Bucky [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Bucky the Vampire Slayer, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Comedy, Fade to Black, First Time, M/M, Minor Character Death, Near Death Experiences, Romantic Comedy, Shrunkyclunks, Snark, Sniper Bucky Barnes, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 06:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16487153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relenafanel/pseuds/relenafanel
Summary: text from Steve:SOS Stark Tower.Well fuck, Bucky thought. If he ended up dying in Manhattan he was going to haunt Steve Rogers for the rest of his life.





	Asleep or Dead (Bucky can be an emo dork when he almost dies)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homoflexible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homoflexible/gifts).



> This is dedicated to the wonderful and patient Flexible as part of the Fandom Trumps Hate auctions.

Watching a vengeance demon play the electric fiddle was an experience Bucky wouldn’t soon forget.  He wasn’t sure what it was about indie music that drew in a crowd of human-passing potential baddies, but then Bucky didn’t really get music.  He loved to dance, sure.  He loved getting a good sweat going to a fantastic beat, but the passion and love for music and rhythm and lyrics completely passed over his head.  It was the kind of thing he objectively understood but wasn’t immersed in.

 

Before his calling, Bucky had understood math.  He knew numbers and angles, and the poetry of the universe of everything.  He’d been a total dork.  Math helped figuring out the best way to jam a stake into the heart, sure, but he’d noticed that a lot more when he’d been human and the first try had mattered.

 

He felt his phone vibrate even with the crush of the crowd around him and the stranger gyrating against his back, a shade away from outright dry humping.  He pulled it out of his pocket, rubbing it against his shirt to try to wipe off some of the sweat and failing completely, probably because his shirt was just as damp as his thigh.

 

 **Steve:** SOS. Stark Tower.

 

Bucky sighed and shoved the phone back in his pocket as he moved across the floor, nodding at Alex for her playing, a subtle reminder that he owned this neighbourhood.  He was Slayer, judge and executioner.

 

And he still needed to get his jacket from the coat check like everyone else.

 

He was seriously hoping no one touched the fucking Orb.  Could Stark’s scientists not last less than three months before ignoring an order?

 

Probably.  Stark seemed the impatient sort.

 

The arctic January air was chilly on his sweat-damp skin, and Bucky wound his scarf back around his neck as he walked.  There was a layer of snow on the ground, grimy from dirt and trodden over by feet.  He could feel the chill through his jacket, Father Frost crawling through the lightweight material and touching the sweat on his skin.  Mentally, he pictured the effect being visible like in Hollywood, but the reality of it was that Bucky had gone from somewhere hot to somewhere cold, and being chilly was very human. 

 

He was doing his best not to be tired.  There were heat-dwelling demons that had gone to ground because of the cold.  There were less cold-dwelling demons that came out this time of year, if he was looking for a 1:1 ratio.  That didn’t mean that he didn’t have to be concerned.  The year before last an amarok came for him, a lost creature hunting those foolish enough to be solidary hunters in the dead of night.

 

January had always been a dead time for Bucky, even before his calling.  December, and the magic of the first snow, gave way to a time of year he felt jaded and tired of working the world’s longest and deadliest unpaid internship.  Natasha liked to remind him that being tired would get him dead as she cast concerned glances at him from the corner of her eye.

 

Bucky would seriously like to remind the chemicals in his brain of that, but they seemed to do their utmost on an annual basis to remind him how human he was, underneath it all.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky wasn’t sure how he ended up standing on the helicopter pad on the very top of Stark Tower while wearing a visitor’s pass, but he was sure that it had something to do with that time he threatened Steve Rogers and then started dating him.  Technically, he’d gotten in an Uber, drove across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan, got out in front of Stark Tower, went up to the front desk and said “Bucky Barnes for Steve Rogers?” in a questioning tone like he expected Steve to have not warned anyone he was coming, and one elevator ride later he was standing on a roof around 350 meters in the air looking longingly across midtown towards Brooklyn. 

 

Everything was a dull greyish brown color, the world in sepia. 

 

That was the view insane amounts of money could buy you in Manhattan, apparently.

 

“We’re not sure what it is,” Stark’s lackey was saying to Bucky, showing complete deference to him despite the fact that Bucky was significantly younger and had absolutely no standing within the organization.  Bucky couldn’t help but wonder what Stark had said to them, how he had described Bucky’s unique skills, and how one of the richest men in the world even knew about them.  He couldn’t help but entertain the idea that maybe Stark hadn’t told his people shit, so the helicopter was about to arrive with Steve in the back and a restrained _something_ , and if Bucky moved forward to Slay it, he was about to cause problems.

 

Or at least shock a few people.

 

It was cold on the roof, a chill in the air and angry snow pellets hitting against his face.  The landing pad itself was heated to prevent snow and ice from sticking to it, but Bucky regretted his thin shirt and leather jacket – as much as he could ever regret looking good.  He wasn’t the only one waiting for the helicopter to land, and none of the other people looked any more prepared for the temperature than he did.  It was a small comfort.

 

Despite seeing it in movies and television, Bucky was almost unprepared for the sound and the wind from the helicopter landing.  It tore his hair out of the bun it was in, whipping strands of it into his eyes, and Bucky’s fingers itched for a weapon as he watched it land on the roof with something that was a bit too bump and nudge to be considered a graceful landing.

 

He was standing there with medical personnel in white coats and people with guns strapped to their sides like they were military or former military, and a few PAs, and he felt an ominous feeling of dread that something was about to happen.  Bucky didn’t think it was Slayer premonition – that always carried weight to it – it was more the amount of horror movies he’d binged-watched recently with Nat.

 

He had an active and paranoid imagination.  Even when Slayer skills and his own common sense failed him, Bucky at least had the ability to look at shadows and see monsters.

 

Steve was the first one out of the helicopter, almost before it entirely finished landing, which was probably against all safety protocol, but who was going to tell Captain America he couldn’t jump an extra foot to the ground?  His eyes swept across the helipad and landed on Bucky. He ignored the three people who stepped forward to intercept him and walked over to Bucky instead, his bearing completely Captain America in a way Steve Rogers was not.

 

“I was accompanying a mission in South Carolina looking into something that’s probably more you than me.”

 

One of the people vying for Steve’s attention made a noise of distress.  “You can’t tell—”

 

Steve made a slashing gesture with his hand as someone was lifted from the helicopter on a stretcher.  “We were ambushed on the walk between the chopper and the campsite.  It didn’t seem like a threat at first – it was just a girl.  She stepped out of the woods and held her hand out like she was asking for help, and he took it before anyone could tell him not to.” Steve shook his head.  “It didn’t occur to me to tell him not to.  I would have reached back too.”

 

It was _never_ just a girl.  The first Men in Black movie had taught him that.

 

Bucky nodded, tersely, his fingers curling into the single stake he had in his jacket.  He had a stiletto knife in his boot.  That was it.

 

“I don’t know how to explain it.  The moment their hands touched she wasn’t a girl anymore.  Thick smoke surrounded him and poured into him, and for a second he just paused. Completely still.  Didn’t fall, didn’t stagger. I’ve never seen anything like it.  Some of the men thought it was a seizure before he snapped out of it and tore off the neck of the first person to touch him.”

 

While Steve spoke, Bucky made his way over to the gurney they were unloading from the helicopter.  Anyone who tried to intercept Bucky met with Steve’s disapproval, and in one case a physical barrier.

 

Bucky looked down at the gurney.  The man on it had torn through his restraints at least once.  He’d been shot, the bullet wounds were bleeding an unusual color.  Bucky hadn’t seen anything like it in person either, but he could remember the symptoms from one of the many books he’d read for research over the years. 

 

And here he’d thought he was jumping at shadows when he compared the scene to a horror movie.  “Bringing him into the city was a bad move,” Bucky said, his pulse racing in his chest as he took a step _away_.  “It was a stupid move, Rogers.”

 

“You’re scared,” Steve observed in surprise.

 

“We need to burn him and get everyone who has had contact with the body into quarantine.”

 

“What is it?” Steve questioned, but his words were lost as the body began to fight against the restraints at Bucky’s words, eyes focused on him with intent. 

 

“Zombies,” Bucky supplied in a succinct tone, because that was the only way he knew how to describe this type of infection and have the people around him understand.

 

x.x.x.

 

Fire.

 

Fire.

 

Bucky needed to find fire.

 

There was fuel on his hands, a wet line of it running down his sleeve and drops of it on the concrete roof.  Enough of it had landed on the zombie that he felt confident that it would go up in flames.

 

If he had one.

 

Bucky was regretting with all his being that he’d never taken up smoking as a teenager.  Helicopter landing pads were fire resistant and the only thing he could think of was finding a way to blow up the helicopter itself.

 

That seemed like a dumb idea.  Bucky didn’t want to be the one who killed a bunch of civilians on Park Avenue with falling debris, even if there wouldn’t be a lot of people out and about on a cold January night.  It was snowing in earnest now, making everything wet, and Bucky was desperate for a flame.

 

The zombie was still advancing on him with the one-tracked-mind of something that knew where the threat was, even though Bucky in his clubbing wear and with his disheveled hair looked like the least threatening person on the roof.

 

“Set it on fire!” he was screaming at all the people standing around watching everything happen.  The security with guns had already emptied their clips, one was lying dead on the pavement.  It felt like eons had passed, but it was probably less than a minute.

 

His fingers curled around the landing skip on the helicopter and he wondered if he had enough strength to pull it off to use as a weapon in the few seconds he had before becoming zombie chow.  From the corner of his eye he could see Steve dive off the side of the platform, searching for something. 

 

Like hell was Bucky Barnes dying in Manhattan on the top of a rich man’s glorified phallic tribute.  The metal bent under his hand, ripping free of the helicopter with a scream of metal and Bucky made a similar cry as he drove the jagged end through the advancing body, following it to the ground and pushing it through the concrete so the zombie was skewered and thrashing, impaled.

 

Bucky wasn’t sure he could call that kind of mindless compliance as fury, but it felt like it to him as he held the rod into the roof and tried to catch his breath.  His hands were bleeding and he inhaled, ready to yell at the gathered crowd to not just stand there staring when Steve’s head popped up from over the side of the platform and he threw a lighter hard enough towards Bucky’s feet that it exploded on impact.

 

Before Bucky could react, Steve was there, pulling him away from the flames with a heavy arm around his waist, putting his back between Bucky and the heat.  Bucky wasn’t sure either of them would die from a few burns, but with the fuel soaking his sleeve and his back landing hard on the concrete with the carried weight of both of them, he felt like all the air was sucked out of his lungs.

 

“Quarantine,” he choked on the scent of charred flesh.  “Everyone.”

 

x.x.x.

 

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Bucky said, his head resting against the glass wall.  It was stupid to have the Slayer in quarantine, but he couldn’t say for sure that he hadn’t been infected. Out of everyone, he was the most likely. He’d sequestered himself in with Steve because the rooms wouldn’t be able to hold either of them, but individually they had a chance against each other.

 

Bucky had already had to leave twice to take care of killing people who’d been in the back of the helicopter with Steve, or maybe it was because they’d been on the ground when the first infection happened.  JARVIS was monitoring body temperatures and notifying Bucky when a person had gone beyond a fever and into brain death.  So far the death rate was 100% and Bucky had been permitted to contact Natasha.  JARVIS was reacting to the situation with an intuitive understanding of the gravity of it, listening to Bucky’s orders and Bucky alone, despite some of the high level personnel who had tried to counter all of them.

 

“I don’t,” Steve answered, staring up at the ceiling from the cot he was lying on.  He looked relaxed, one leg bent and still resting on the floor, and his hands clasped gently in front of him, the very picture of a good soldier waiting it out.  Bucky knew he was anything but.

 

“Ah huh,” Bucky agreed.

 

“Holdover from the War, and only when I’m annoyed into it,” Steve admitted.  “Usually by Tony.”

 

“So you keep them here?”

 

“So I keep them here,” Steve agreed.

 

Bucky sighed.  “Thanks for not being perfect.”

 

Steve made a face up at the ceiling.  “I never said I was.  That’s an unrealistic and impossible standard to meet.”

 

“Hey,” Bucky said in a sharp tone.  “Look at me.  The things I like the most about you are about as far from the mythic aryan perfection of Captain America as you get.  I don’t know how often people are honest with you or if you had to put it together yourself, but in the 70 years you were missing the legend of Captain America got skewed until it became this political Republican ideal.  Then you came along and told them all to get fucked.”  Bucky grinned at him and Steve smiled back, tentative and a little pained.  “I like that about you.”

 

“Are you trying to cheer me up?” Steve questioned in a sardonic tone.

 

“Not particularly,” Bucky answered.  “But I like that you have a secret rage-smoking habit when you’re annoyed and that you’re openly bi and that you swear like a fucking sailor.  Those are the things about you that turn me on.”

 

“You thought I was a Republican and a vampire?  Somehow I’m more insulted by the first.”

 

“Jury is still out on the vampire,” Bucky told him.  God he was tired.  “But even if you are, you can suck me dry any time you want.”

 

Steve had his disapproving face on, like he wasn’t even remotely considering it, which was a travesty, really, what with all the Stark employees watching the video feed.  Too many people still looked at Steve like he was who they were raised hearing about.  It would probably do them good to see Steve do something filthy in a containment unit with a hot stranger.

 

It would probably do Steve good.  “I saw you check me out in these pants when you jumped out of that helicopter.”

 

Steve’s mouth softened.  “I barely had time to look at you.”  He propped himself up on his elbow, facing Bucky.  “Which is a shame.”

 

Yep.  Bucky was going to seduce Steve Rogers in a room with a glass wall and a video camera pointed at their faces.  And Steve was about to let him.

 

“Mr. Barnes,” JARVIS broke in.  “You’re needed in quarantine room C.”

 

When he got back, then.  If he was still in the mood after he put someone down who’d been healthy less than six hours before.

 

x.x.x.

 

"I'm tired," Steve said to him when Bucky walked back into the room. 

 

Bucky pulled short in the doorway and tried not to telegraph his reaction.

 

Steve’s skin was an ashen color, and Bucky suspected the worst.  He was sure both of them knew it from the way Steve’s face was grim and his jaw was squared stubbornly, like he was about to ignore the pain and the fever and the shortness of breath until he dropped from it.

 

Or ignore it away.  If anyone could out-stubborn a zombie infection it was Steve Rogers.

 

"I know," Bucky said, and thought about Steve joking about how he'd slept for 70 years and then never slept again.  "You'll be fine," he found himself promising, though he wasn't sure that was true or not.  He didn't really care if he was lying to Steve.  He'd rather lie to Steve right to the end than say something that would make him stop fighting.  "The serum has always protected you."

 

Bucky actually believed that.  He sat down next to Steve on the cot and let him put his head on Bucky's lap. Bucky stroked his hair and tried not to think about it.

 

If Captain America had gotten sick, what defense was Slayer power?  Bucky wasn't really thinking of it as a sacrifice, or one of those situations where he felt like he couldn't live without Steve Rogers.  He just knew that if the situation was reversed that Steve would never leave his side.  It wasn't love, but it was some sort of respect with a bit of protective self-sacrifice.  That was Steve's big play, and Bucky was no better.  


A pair of fools they were.  


Steve started to cough, which wasn't one of the symptoms any of the other victims had displayed.  "What?" Bucky started to say as he lurched up.  Bucky's hand closed around the gun he’d stolen, but Steve didn't have the same range of motion as the dead.  Instead he dove for the garbage can and puked, violently and heavily, into it.  


"Jesus," Bucky winced in sympathy. He stood and walked over so he could rub Steve's back as he dry heaved into the garbage.  "There's a toilet 3 feet away," he couldn't help but point out, hiding a smile as Steve took the effort to raise his middle finger behind his back.  "Yeah, you're ok.  Feeling better?"  


Steve answered him by throwing up again, spewing what looked like venomous tar into the garbage.  


"Ok," Bucky said.  He wasn't a sympathetic puker, but it smelled pretty gross.  He probably wouldn't be able to see Steve as sexy for weeks after this, but he was starting to hope that he wouldn't have to actually test out his strength against zombie Captain America.  Like.  Fuck, speak about a worst case scenario.   


Steve stopped dry heaving and Bucky handed him a wad of toilet paper.  "Wipe your face and stand back.  JARVIS needs to incinerate this."

 

"And you wonder why I didn't use the toilet."  


"Bad instincts dude," Bucky reminded him.  "This whole floor is blocked off.  JARVIS has been taking care of waste the entire time."

 

"You only call me dude when you forget you want to have sex with me."  Steve dry-heaved a bit and made his own point.

 

"Do you blame me right now?"

  
"No."

 

Bucky figured he should make some sort of overture if he ever wanted to get laid, but Steve was parasitical and potentially zombified.  So far Bucky had lucked out.  He’d probably have to draw a line at zombie. “JARVIS, temperatures?”

 

“The Captain’s is down 1.4 degrees.  Yours is maintaining a constant variance accountable through physical activity and dress.”

 

“Let me know if it fluctuates even slightly outside of those parameters?”

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve was sleeping, his skin had turned back into a healthy coloring and the sweat in his hair had dried so it was sticking up.  He looked alive.  Bucky finally faced the fact that he’d almost had to slay Captain America.  For real.  Every single one of the people on the helicopter had died, and realistically it had been when the creature impersonating a girl held out her hand, before they’d even seen Bucky, but that didn’t quell the reality that he’d had to set seven people on fire. 

 

Fire had been on Bucky’s list of ways to kill Captain America.

 

“JARVIS?”

 

“Both of your temperatures hold steady.  Scans remain clean.”

 

Bucky sighed, heavy and relieved.

 

“Indeed,” JARVIS agreed.  “Recommended quarantine is six hours.”

 

“Double it,” Bucky suggested.  “Just to be safe.”

 

“Noted,” JARVIS agreed.  “You should sleep.  I promise to notify you if there are any changes.”

 

“You’re great,” Bucky told him, patting the wall. God, he was exhausted, but there was a small part of him worried he’d wake up to Steve sicker, or that his exhaustion was a symptom.  JARVIS had become more communicative once he realized Bucky required more frequent updates and that his silence was worry-ladened.  As far as AIs went, JARVIS was amazing. “You’re the best.”

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky woke up to find Steve sitting with his back against the glass wall where Bucky had been sitting earlier. He was watching Bucky sleep.  He looked much better, with pinkened skin and clear eyes.

 

Bucky turned his head to look back.

 

“Your shirt is translucent.” Steve noted with an eyebrow raise, like it was something he’d noticed while Bucky was sleeping and waited all this time just to tell him.

 

“I was dancing in a club when I got your text,” Bucky replied, stretching off the lingering need to sleep.  It might be the most consecutive hours he’d gotten in a while.  His left hand was locked tight into a fist and only opened as far as to take the shape of the tentacle he’d damaged it on.  It happened when he slept deeply, and he brought his right hand over to massage it back to normal, eyes on Steve.

 

The corner of Steve’s mouth went up. “They’re calling you my sexy boyfriend.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Stark’s staff.”

 

“Annoying?” Bucky questioned, moving so he could sit, planting his left hand on the bed to stretch out the fingers.  “Or accurate?”

 

“Are we going to have this conversation here?”

 

Bucky shrugged and raised his palms towards the ceiling.  “Jarvis, time?”

 

“Four hours, thirty five minutes and fifteen seconds remain.”

 

“Thanks. Jarvis and I have shorthand now,” Bucky said.  “We don’t have to have this conversation here.  But. Well.  We’ll have to have it, and we have time.  It’s up to you.”

 

Steve was silent for a moment and then he gave a terse nod.  “It’s annoyingly accurate.”

 

“Yeah, it is,” Bucky said with a grin.  “Alright, then.”

 

They were silent for a moment.  “That’s it?” Steve asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Bucky shrugged.  “What more is there to say?  I’m your sexy boyfriend.  You’re my sexy boyfriend.  We’ll have to discuss how comfortable we are about the sexy aspects of our relationship, which isn’t the same as confirming the status of it. You basically summed it up.”

 

“I expected it to be a lot harder.”

 

“It is, sometimes.  But I figure that to you a boyfriend means a monogamous, committed partner, but I’m willing to have a convo if it doesn’t, and when I agreed with you I accepted those terms.”

 

“Oh, so I summed it up.” He looked a little shell-shocked, like he had the first time Bucky had kissed him, but pleased and smiling.

 

“Come here,” Bucky said, holding his hand out for Steve.  “Snuggle with me.  We have more than 4 hours to kill and I can think of a few things we could be doing.”

 

Steve gave him a sarcastic expression.

 

“You say that,” Bucky said in response.  “But top of my list is going back to sleep.  It’s a luxury I don’t think either of us take very often.”

 

Steve answered him by getting up and getting on the cot next to Bucky. It was a tight fit and Bucky curled around Steve, his arm slung over his waist, and relaxed into him.  Slowly, Steve let himself relax in return until they awoke to the harsh sound of Stark entering the room with a joke about domesticity. 

 

x.x.x.

 

“Haven’t you heard,” Bucky said, facing down some kind of creature that looked like a lint roller married a cheese grater.  “I’m the Brooklyn Slayer.  Bringer of Death. Magical Interloper. Defeater of Mar’ins -Voy,” he paused, because that last one seemed to make the thing pause.  “Protector of Brooklyn and all the people and creatures in it.  Captain America’s sexy boyfriend.”

 

“Oh boy,” Natasha said in a sarcastic tone, and he could hear her roll her eyes as she brought up an axe. 

 

x.x.x.

 

The roller cheese grater had friends.  A lot of friends.

 

x.x.x.

 

Breaking into Steve Rogers’s apartment shouldn’t be as easy as it turned out being.  Bucky had picked up some things over the years, but Steve’s security system was state of the art in a way that made the current security in a lot of banks look obsolete.  The device scanned him the moment Bucky slid through the window, and then it beeped green. 

 

So the system was difficult, but for Bucky it ended up being anticlimactic.

 

Of course Steve was the kind of person who would grant access to the person he was seeing, as if trust was something decided on and not earned through time.

 

Though.  Well.  Bucky would trust Steve with a key to his apartment.  Not because he was dating Steve but because Steve was Captain America and that didn’t only come with a kind of trustworthy reputation, but he was the only person in Brooklyn who had the strength to win a fight against Bucky.  Bucky trusted Nat to come get him if he was kidnapped.  He trusted Steve to put him down if need be.

 

It was at least vaguely reassuring to know that Steve didn’t live in a fancy dancy apartment.  He lived in the kind of place that hadn’t been updated since the 80s or 90s, no crown molding in sight. There was some mold, though. It was kind of sad to think that not even Steve Rogers got paid enough to afford Brooklyn these days.  And he knew that Steve was into old architecture.  On patrol once he had to suffer through a 20 minute history lesson expressed in passionate tones as Steve stood in front of some asshole’s house and ignored their dog barking at him.

 

Steve wasn’t home, which made sense considering he hadn’t answered his fucking door and he’d been born before 1980 and so answering things was an ingrained politeness for him.  Steve answered his phone when it rang, too.  Bucky granted him that he had the kind of job where it was smart not to watch your phone ring out.

 

But still.

 

Bucky wasn’t that polite, case in point totally breaking into his boyfriend’s place without permission.  It was the first time he was over, and Steve didn’t even know about it.  That definitely didn’t win him any Miss Manners behavior awards.

 

Which was unfortunate, because Bucky couldn’t find Steve’s weapon cache and it was looking more and more like he’d have to call Steve and tell him where he was.  It would have been much better if he could just text Steve like ‘borrowed your weapons cache. Nice book collection’ on his way out the door.

 

“Hey security drone thing?” Bucky said out loud, because why not?

 

“Yes Mr. Barnes?”

 

“JARVIS!  Man, am I glad to hear you.  Do you know where Steve keeps his weapons?”

 

“Beneath the bed.”

 

Well that fucking figured. He’d given Steve the benefit of the doubt and assumed he had a firearms cabinet or something.  Steve’s bed wasn’t made, which out of everything was kind of a surprise, but a welcome one.  At least Steve wouldn’t take one look at Bucky’s bedroom and run.

 

Bucky got to his knees and pulled the bedskirt out of the way, rolling his eyes because _bedskirt_. That was the equivalent of throwing a towel over a handgun to hide it from view.

 

There was a wayward sock and a ton of dust bunnies, which proved that Steve Rogers was just as messy as most people, but no cache of weapons.  “Try again,” he said to JARVIS.

 

JARVIS did the AI equivalent to a shrug.  “Do you wish for me to alert him to your presence?”

 

“No thanks, buddy.”  Then Bucky thought about how desperately he needed a gun. There were parts of him where the skin had been grated off, and he felt like he was being hunted. “Yes.  Can you call him?”

 

“I am equipped with voice over internet protocol.”

 

“What?” Steve’s voice filled the air. “Hello? Bucky?” There was a lot of distortion on the line, including something that sounded like a motor and wind.  Helicopter maybe?  The last time Steve had been on a helicopter didn’t work out well for him.

 

“Steve!”  It was weird just talking out loud to Steve’s room.  He tried to project his voice towards a panel on the wall, but for all he knew it could be Steve’s thermostat.

 

“Where are you?”

 

“I’m in your bedroom, where are you?”

 

“Assignment.  What are you doing in my bedroom?”

 

“I need a gun.  I thought I could rely on Captain America to have at least one hidden somewhere.  I’m now kind of concerned about your safety.  JARVIS said beneath your bed.”

 

“I grabbed that kit on my way out the door.  There’s a pistol in the cupboard above the fridge and a long range rifle in the storage room.  The case is inside one of those rubbermaid containers and it has one of my old uniforms on top of it.”

 

“Thank you!” Bucky said.  “I knew I could count on you to at least own shit, even if you rarely use it.”

 

“Well it turns out a zombie apocalypse is a potential reality in my life,” Steve said in a dry tone.

 

“Only if you keep bringing it back with you.”

 

Steve grunted over the line, and it wasn’t the kind of grunt that said he was agreeing with Bucky.  It was the kind of grunt that said he’d just gotten punched in the stomach.

 

“Are you in the middle of a fight?”

 

“Not a very challenging one,” Steve said with the kind of sardonic tone that said Steve had been smacking someone down who thought they’d be a contender.  And weren’t.

 

“I kind of am too, hence needing a gun.  Next time I see you we’re talking about why I’m OKed by your security system.”

 

“No we’re not,” Steve said in a cheerful tone.  “See you later.  Have fun with your projectile weapons.”

 

Bucky always had fun with projectile weapons.

 

x.x.x.

 

It was like fucking Duck Hunt or any of those other shooting games that judged speed and accuracy.  Ok, probably not Duck Hunt – but it felt more like hunting ducks than it did hunting zombies.  The lint rollers could fly, or at least jump really high.

 

The plan was for Bucky to shoot them, weeding off as many of them as possible, while Natasha and Sam found the nest and salted it with tar.

 

So, Bucky was bait.

 

Bucky was bait in about 85% of his encounters, so he wasn’t that concerned about it.  The kind of creatures that saw Bucky as bait were the kind too arrogant to realize they were being hunted in return.  Vampires were the usual culpits, but not even a yeti would surprise him at this point.

 

Bucky planted his ass on a fire escape, looked through the scope, and started shooting.

 

Aim had always been something he was good at, but something he rarely got the chance to use.  Steve’s rifle was far better than anything Bucky could ever get his hands on, and it took him two shots to get used to how it worked.

 

Then, it was just a matter of aiming and pulling the trigger, a rhythm that was almost relaxing.  Or, it would be, if he didn’t have to pause to rip some of them off his back occasionally.  He should have stolen Steve’s old uniform for protection, but part of him feared it literally was some kind of spandex blend.  It felt like it was made from the same thing his skinny jeans were, and wasn’t that a fucking trip?

 

Within ten minutes over a hundred of the sharp little terrors were culled down to something in the teens, and it was taking longer to find them when they weren’t clouding his field. 

 

x.x.x.

 

 **Bucky:** are your uniforms the same material as my skinny jeans?

 **Steve:** I’d have to feel your skinny jeans again to tell.

 **Bucky:** but, like, do they survive explosions?

 **Steve:** They don’t shred like the knee on your grey pair did when you were thrown off the roof of that building.

 

Damn.  He should have stolen it then.

 

x.x.x.

 

Winter fucking blew.

 

And it wasn’t just the gusts of wind that shifted the snow, it was also the weird winter demons that were better at withstanding the cold than Bucky was.  Bucky would be the first to admit that he was a bit princess-y about the cold.  He’d hated it as human, and he hated it as Slayer, and if he could travel somewhere warmer he would. 

 

Except Florida.  That whole state was a hellscape.

 

The claw marks on his side were itching, and he knew the moment this whole thing was over, he’d be whining to Natasha to check to make sure it wasn’t infected, magic or otherwise. 

 

A fucking shapeshifting Russian bear.

 

A FUCKING SHAPESHIFTING RUSSIAN BEAR.

 

It had been hunting Natasha.  The Russian did warn Bucky that it wasn’t his fight, but Bucky had all of Nat’s Slayer abilities, so he figured he had a better chance of surviving a shapeshifting bear than Nat did. 

 

Probably.

 

He’d tried hand to hand combat and got clawed for his troubles.

 

And mocked.  In Russian.

 

x.x.x.

 

 **Bucky:** I just won a wrestling match against a giant Russian shapeshifting bear

 **Bucky:** With my own two hands

 **Steve:** Define bear?

 **Bucky:** Steve! was that a gay joke!

 **Steve:** :D

 **Bucky:** damn I didn’t even think of that, I should have led with it.

 **Steve:** so you wrestled the bear with your own two hands? Who yielded first?

 **Bucky:** Is that an innuendo or are you asking?

 **Bucky:** He wanted to prove himself the toughest Russian, and when he learned Natasha wasn’t Slayer anymore he shrugged and left.

 **Steve:** So you won because he defaulted and walked away

 **Bucky:** I take my wins where I find them

 

x.x.x.

 

“It’s not infected, you dumbass,” Natasha told him, barely looking at his skin.  “Why do you have to do this every time?  Have you ever gotten an infection?”

 

“No, but there’s a first time for everything.”

 

“Including not being a whiny bitch about it,” she told him in a sarcastic tone that told him more than anything that he’d be ok.  Natasha had asked after his health during the zombie scare, and this was a lot less frightening than that had been.

 

Natasha worried? A portend of Bucky dying.

 

x.x.x.

 

When Bucky opened the door for Steve he was wearing a crop top so the claw marks on his side could get air and he could liberally apply antiseptic to it every few minutes.  He wasn’t too concerned about infection or tetnus (anymore), but healing wounds still itched like a bitch even when you were the Slayer.  He’d tried to go shirtless, but his shithole of an apartment was chilly, and even his loosest hoodie kept getting stuck in the gel goop in a way that was more annoying than anything else.

 

The shirt was probably the same rationality as why women wore padded bras.  Reducing the nip, and all that.

 

Natasha had told him he was a drama queen when he said that, and then hugged him to thank him for not allowing her to get clawed to shit.  It was a touching moment.

 

Steve’s eyes spanned down, dipping to Bucky’s low-riding pyjama bottoms, over to the lines of scabs two inches above his hip, and then back to his exposed midriff. 

 

“No concern for my wound?” Bucky asked as Steve’s attention settled in a way that was unerringly flattering. 

 

“You’ll heal,” Steve answered, and reached out, his hand curving around Bucky’s hip on his uninjured side.  “Maybe I should stop by unannounced more often, if this is what you wear at home.”

 

Bucky looked down at himself.  “I wore this shirt at least 10 times last summer.  Kiss my ass No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service.”

 

Steve’s mouth twitched in amusement as he moved in to kiss Bucky with a kind of intensity that Bucky craved.  Steve kissed like he was still shy of it, most times, uncertain with himself and the process, but gaining confidence as the moment escalated.  But this time there wasn’t escalation, he just went for what he wanted in a way that made Bucky’s body sing. 

 

Bucky ended up following Steve’s body down on the couch, settling in curved over Steve, straddling one of his thighs.

 

“I saw you on YouTube,” Steve told him, breathing more heavily than usual but grinning up at Bucky.

 

“Doing what?” Bucky asked, because hell, he made it on YouTube all the time.  Nat and Sam had started a playlist.  Some of it featured his undeniable fashion instincts, but mostly it was videos of him killing something weird-looking that got put down to being a hoax.  _Local Brooklyn man slices head off crocodile-human hybrid with a sword_ and all that.

 

“Sniping moving pumice stones one by one.”

 

Oh yeah.  That’s what they looked like.  Put two people who regularly do home pedicures in a room (plus Sam, who probably paid for his like a chump) and have _Steve Rogers_ point out the similarities between the evil little creatures and a pumice stone.

 

“Ah,” Bucky said.  So someone had witnessed that.  “Competency kink? Foot fetish?”

 

“Nah,” Steve answered, leaning back and looking at Bucky through his eyelashes. He made a delish line of man candy on Bucky’s couch. “I find your ridiculous clothes a turn on.”

 

“I’ll leave them on, then,” Bucky said, taking a moment to brush back his hair and leaning in for a kiss.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky could confirm that Steve was 100% unadorned of any kind of enchanted accessories that allowed him to go out in the sun.

 

But more searching was required.  As Slayer, he could be as patient needed.

 

He said that to Steve, and Steve just made a face at him.  “Bold words for someone with a My Chemical Romance tattoo.”

 

“I’m not sure you get to hold that over my head considering I had to explain it to you,” Bucky pointed out and grinned.  He’d gotten the words ‘awake and unafraid. Asleep or dead.’ etched into his skin shortly after an incident before he became Slayer that neither he nor Natasha ever spoke of.  It had been a particularly emo moment for him, and not speaking about it was probably the only reason Natasha didn’t make fun of him daily for it.

 

He stood by the sentiment, though.  Now more than ever.

 

“What’s all over my hands?” Steve asked, wiping them on Bucky’s comforter and making a face at him.

 

Bucky made a face back because now he was going to have to drag the entire thing to the laundromat or face the idea it would forever have a sticky handprint on it.

 

“Lube?” Bucky asked, reaching into his nightstand for tissues.

 

“It’s not lube,” Steve answered, sounding affronted, but he honestly had reason to be considering Bucky was the one with it in his ass.  “I didn’t touch it.”

 

That was such a lie.  There weren’t a lot of things Steve Rogers didn’t put his hands on once he lost himself to it. 

 

And his fingers.  And his mouth.  “Come?” Bucky tried again.

 

“Maybe,” Steve conceded, wrinkling his nose, like he forgot Bucky was the one who also had that up his ass.  Yay for Slayer abilities to have unsafe sex with human-status-questionable people!  If only he had time to really use that to his advantage and see if he even liked unsafe sex.  He was thinking it might not be worth it.  “I think it’s your antiseptic ointment.  How much did you put on?”

 

A tube.  Eventually all his ill-gotten vampire loot would go towards antiseptic ointment and coffee. And now lube. He was probably ok with that.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Bucky said instead, reaching for his phone.  “I gotta text Nat,” he said, ignoring Steve as he groaned and threw his arm over his face. He paused to look at him because Steve was adorable and Bucky felt content, but contentment didn’t trump trolling his bff and his boyfriend at once. “I promised! She’s gonna hate it.  Can I send her a picture? With my hand for context?”

 

“You’re a menace,” Steve told him, shaking with laughter.  Then his hands reached out and grabbed Bucky, pulling him forward.  His side wasn’t hurting anymore, which meant that at some point while he was perched on Steve’s dick it had healed. 

 

Maybe that was Steve’s something-else.  Magically healing cock.

 

Deserved more testing.  He told Steve and that one Steve did agree with.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on Tumblr.](http://relenafanel.tumblr.com/)


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